Film Screening: DNA Dreams

Part of the film series "Being Human in a Biotech Age," the University of California, Berkeley hosts a screening of DNA Dreams

Sponsors: Department of Gender and Women's Studies, Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society, The Center for Genetics and Society

What if you were allowed to have only one child and had the option of selecting its genes? Would you choose for a natural or a designer baby? Every day new technologies are bringing us closer a brave new world of enhanced human beings 2.0…. What kind of world will that be? The documentary DNA Dreams features a new generation of scientists at BGI, China’s leading genomics research institute. The film follows 18-year-old scientist Zhao Bowen, who wants to find the genetic basis of intelligence by analyzing the DNA of 2,000 highly gifted children. At BGI’s cloning lab, 25-year-old Lin Lin produces pigs in all shapes and sizes. Deeply in love with her work, she feels “like a mother” to the piglets that are conceived under her microscope.

Films will be followed by discussions with film directors and//or faculty.

With powerful new biotechnologies now emerging, the prospect of creating humans with “better” genetic characteristics is on the horizon. Some support these technologies as a way to "seize control of human evolution" or as an efficient means of producing "enhanced" children and future generations. Others believe that they would encourage efforts to engineer children to specification, and that creating genetically modified humans would open the door to new forms of inequality, discrimination and conflict. This film series explores what it means to be human in a biotech age.

Cosponsored by Disability Studies Program, Departments of Sociology.
This event is disability accessible.